Making time for yourself

​On July 26th, I joined NWP’s newest community writing group in Stevington – a company of teachers, ex-teachers and others. This was the group’s fourth meeting.

First we scribbled down our ‘notes to self’ and shared a few – a mixture of the trivial, worldly and ontological – the doubts about the day of the week, insurance, families,  Stow on the Wold – as well as  reminders to ‘take time and make time’ for ourselves. We often use writing to get a grip, to hold on, to remember. But in the trusted writing group there is time to let go, to collide with the words and thoughts of others – to allow ourselves to go with what we thought we heard, even if we weren’t sure, and to surprise ourselves into – or out of - ourselves.

Then we bounced ideas off poetic fragments (see weekly write 9) and used whatever had risen personally, or had coalesced in conversation, as a springboard for 15 minutes’ writing. The effectiveness of the resultant reflections, fantasies and memoirs, depended in part on how writers were able to ‘jump in’ and ‘hold’ their images and tones together as the writing flowed.

​Authentic writing can become distinctive and compelling when writers

• let their 'colours' diffuse unconsciously,
• allow themselves to let phrases and ideas lead them,
• and resist the distraction of too much premature ‘in-flight editing’. 

Later, a degree of distance – provided by sensitive listeners or one’s own attentive ear – often reveals where the voice wobbles, where things are too fragmented or over-written.

​It’s one process amongst many.

On July 29th, NWP Bedford community writing group met in the Higgins museum to see how the curators had displayed their work alongside the exhibits which provoked it (see photos).
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The group has met eight times this year, and is practised in using the collections to re-collect, in discovering human stories behind artefacts and in animating inanimate objects. For some in this group, writing together is a sacred space for themselves and a way of holding on to what matters. Several use writing to gather and shape thoughts and feeling about personal and issues.  A few are several chapters in to imagining and recreating family histories from the inside out, but for the majority, there is little writing between the monthly 2-hour sessions. Hence how treasured these opportunities are.

​Victorian mourning necklace

A chain around the neck. Unremitting black, chiselled, hard. No light reflecting. Fettering rope of rings and blocks. But look closer and just see the delicacy of tendrils etched on the faces of the pendant lozenges. Parody of diamonds. She snaps the clasp at her neck, links angular against her skin. Heavy too. Four more seasons of this. Chin up, shoulders braced, grim set of her mouth. Swish of black crepe skirts as she sweeps silently from room to room, muffled, squeezed in her public face of mourning. Still shackled after all. 

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If you're a teacher who'd like to write with a group, please click here to join one. If you'd like to experience writing alongside others, click here to join the group at the Tate Modern on Tuesday 15 August. If you can't do either of those things but you'd still like to challenge yourself to write on your own, why not click here to take up a month's writing challenge or click here to try out one of the 'weekly writes'?

Enjoy the summer!


Simon Wrigley
NWP outreach director